Monday, July 27, 2009

some thoughts on vaccinations

I'm going to try and label posts in this category from now on. I thought some people might be interested as I work through what vaccinations to give Grace and when she should receive them.

More vaccines are offered as standard in the US than in the UK, which means an even greater load on a developing immune system.

We've already turned down the Hepatitis B Vaccine, given it's a disease transmitted by dirty needles, unprotected sex etc. it hardly seems necessary to give it to a baby.

Whilst the older children aren't in school and Grace is exclusively breastfed and not in any daycare, she's at very low risk for any kind of disease, which buys us a little more time to make our decisions. Sausage Boy reacted to his first vaccines and he was a similar gestation to Grace, Banana Girl didn't react at all, but she was older (both gestationally and when we finally made it in to get them done) and significantly bigger, according to her red book, she was 12 and a half pounds when she got her vaccines, Grace weighed 9lb today. Sausage Boy was a little under 9 pounds by the looks of things, I don't know how much can be attributed to age or weight, but either way, for Grace things seem to only just be coming together, so we're not taking the risk of a set back now and will wait until she's bigger and older.